


Soft Spot

by hbunting1403



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Accountant Derek, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Coffee, College Student Stiles, Derek is an accountant, Engineering, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Derek, POV Derek Hale, Pining, spot the references, stiles is at college
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 05:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12336795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hbunting1403/pseuds/hbunting1403
Summary: "You remembered that?" Derek is kind of surprised by how raw he sounds, but for all that it's a homemade piece of electrical equipment, he's seriously touched. It may as well be a bouquet of roses for all his wasted little heart cares."I remember everything," Stiles says with a small smile, and Derek's perhaps-not-so-wasted heart makes a valiant attempt to jump up into his throat. Standing in a rumpled shirt and jeans, holding a half-drunk cup of coffee and still wearing his boots, he's never felt this vulnerable in his life; but it's nothing compared to the hope he can feel swelling, unbidden and unstoppable, in his chest.***Derek pines --- and he would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for a mechanical engineering student and his uncanny ability to say just the right things.





	Soft Spot

Derek has not had a great day. Mrs Jenkins brought her car to the garage in the afternoon and proceeded to rip into him for roughly half an hour about various unsatisfactory (and irrelevant) aspects of her life, including - but not limited to: the state of the engine; how she'd brought it  _here_ last and that it must have been something  _they'd_ done; why exactly were they so determined to  _sabotage_ a little old lady's car, she'd like to know; and his personal favourite, "where's the cherub-looking one, I'd like to give him a piece of my mind". It took a further ten minutes for Derek to calmly explain to her that he was actually the accountant, that Isaac was seeing to another customer at the moment, and that her twenty-year-old three door hatchback was not made for the offroading she liked to do at weekends. She did not take kindly to the insinuation.

The thing is, everyone  _knows_ Mrs Jenkins is a seventy-year-old thrill seeker; the Sheriff has pulled her over three times in the last month for speeding, and Derek strongly suspects she's also responsible for the increasingly vehement "anonymous" letters to the local newspaper regarding the lack of adequate skateboarding facilities in Beacon Hills. She is an absolute _demon_ on a board.

So today hasn't been the best he's ever had. Obviously it also isn't the worst, since he hasn't had to hold his own insides in his hands even once, but he isn't a huge fan of being yelled at by septuagenarians either. He is overwhelmingly glad for his accelerated healing, as he's not sure the ringing in his ears would have died down quite so quickly otherwise.

Derek unlocks his door with a huff and steps inside his flat with a headache that hasn't quite faded yet, throwing his keys into the bowl on the sideboard.

Christ. When did he become domestic enough to own a  _sideboard_?

A clatter from the kitchen drags him back from thoughts of whether or not he should just claw it to pieces to relieve some of his tension and he shakes his head, removing his coat and putting it on a hook by the door. Because he also has hooks now - and a coat instead of a leather jacket. He's definitely going soft. Derek cracks his neck - a habit he's been reliably informed is "kinda creepy, big guy", though he still can't quite shake it - and wanders through to the kitchen in search of the source of the noise.

And a coffee. A very large coffee.

He isn't even slightly surprised to see Stiles there - everyone in the pack has a key now, and he's going to pretend that he doesn't have Stiles' particular scent and heartbeat memorised - but he is slightly confused as to why he's sitting on the floor, surrounded by bits of metal and plastic and staring up at Derek with a look of trepidation and guilt.

"Stiles," he says, nodding and stepping over the debris in search of the dark roast. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" Stiles snorts.

"How does this not phase you any more? I'm sitting in a mechanical graveyard on your fancy white tiles, dude. When did you mellow?" Derek shrugs and fills the kettle, getting two mugs down from the cupboard on autopilot.

"I just had a freakout in the hallway because I have a sideboard. Also, those tiles are Valencia Ivory," he deadpans, grabbing milk from the fridge before doling out spilling teaspoons of coffee into the mugs. "Nobody would find the body if Lydia heard you calling them 'white'." Stiles actually laughs at that, running a hand through his already wild hair. Derek pretends his heart doesn't flutter in his chest at the familiar sight, and his hands are rock steady as he pours water and milk into each cup. The heady feeling of Stiles'  _everything_ so close by has never gotten any less, but it has become easier to handle over the years; the longing is a dull ache that he holds in his chest, knowing that the vibrancy of Stiles' existence was never meant for someone like him.

"Stop being funny, you know it throws me off," Stiles says with a huff of feigned annoyance, gratefully taking the mug of hot coffee Derek passes to him with a murmur of thanks. Derek leans a hip against the counter and takes a sip, allowing the too-hot liquid to burn the last few traces of tension from the lines of his shoulders. He rolls his neck with a crack like distant thunder ("ew," Stiles helpfully narrates) and peers down at the detritus littering his otherwise pristine kitchen floor, trying to make some sense of the jumbled mess.

"School project?" he asks, and a surprisingly bashful look briefly steals across the other man's face. Derek isn't sure what he has to be embarrassed about. Mechanical engineering isn't for the faint of heart and Stiles had taken to his degree like he was born to it; things simply spring to life under his hands in a way that Derek will never be entirely convinced isn't a little bit magical. This isn't the first - or even the twenty-first - time Stiles has used Derek's flat to do some 'homework' away from his dad's place. He thinks that might have something to do with the Sheriff's firm belief that Stiles, while unequivocally brilliant, is only two wires and a glass of water away from accidentally electrocuting himself.

Derek likes to think he has a little more faith himself.

(He also has a very well-stocked First Aid kit and Alan Deaton on speed-dial)

"Not exactly," Stiles says slowly, running another of those distracting hands through his hair and using the other to pull a vaguely familiar-looking item out of the wreckage. "You mentioned something last week... Isaac's having some trouble with his spot welder? And you didn't want to have to tell him that the books don't really allow for him to replace it right now, even though you'd totally buy it for him as a gift, because you know he'd never take it after the money you poured into the place when he started it up." Stiles shrugs, now looking the most awkward Derek's seen him in years. "So they're actually not that hard to make? And I didn't want you worrying about Isaac and Pack stuff when you've been so stressed lately with shitty clients and all that jazz and, well---" He shrugs again, cutting himself off with a self-deprecating laugh. "I know it doesn't look like much..."

Derek's mind is reeling. What Stiles is holding is a spot welder, which is indeed something Isaac needs replacing at the garage, and which Derek had of course mentioned to Stiles in one of the many late-night conversations they have about how  _stressed_ they both are (even if they both admit that it's nice to be stressed about something normal for once). But that was a week ago, and he hasn't mentioned it since.

"You remembered that?" Derek is kind of surprised by how raw he sounds, but for all that it's a homemade piece of electrical equipment, he's seriously touched. It may as well be a bouquet of roses for all his wasted little heart cares.

"I remember everything," Stiles says with a small smile, and Derek's perhaps-not-so-wasted heart makes a valiant attempt to jump up into his throat. Standing in a rumpled shirt and jeans, holding a half-drunk cup of coffee and still wearing his boots, he's never felt this vulnerable in his life; but it's nothing compared to the hope he can feel swelling, unbidden and unstoppable, in his chest.

That's a hell of a confession.

Stiles is looking at the spot welder, fiddling with a few of the components that Derek instinctively knows are having absolutely no effect on the finished product. He puts down his cup of coffee and carefully lowers himself to the ground so that their thighs are pressed together, a long line of heat that has nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with electricity. There's a hitch in Stiles' breathing, and Derek can't even bring himself to care that there is  _definitely_ a screwdriver digging into his ass, because this is happening, this is  _finally happening_.

He curls a hand around Stiles' jaw and gently guides his face so that they're eye-to-eye. Derek has always thought that Stiles' eyes were beautiful. To say they're brown would be a gross miscarriage of justice; there's gold in there, and when he's passionate about something they go dark and fiery, completely incapable of not reflecting his mood to the _n_ th degree. They're dark now, but he knows it's different this time.

"Good. Because I want you to remember this," he says softly, leaning in purposefully to remove the last few inches between them. The kiss is fleeting, but the feeling it stirs within him is anything but; Stiles makes a soft sound of surprise in the back of his throat, and Derek wants to bathe in that sound, he really does, but he doesn't want this to be one-sided. He pulls back.

He needn't have worried.

Stiles allows him roughly one  _second_ of breathing space before he's climbing into Derek's lap and pressing their mouths together again, a muttered " _finally_ " the only coherent sound before Derek's being kissed with a ferocity he's never felt before. Stiles' hands are cradling his face and his own hands have found the soft skin of Stiles' hips below his shirt, and there's moaning coming from one of them for sure before Stiles is licking into his mouth and everything else kind of fades away for a while.

When Derek pulls away he's sporting a not inconsiderable erection, there's something sharp and metal pressing into his spine, and Stiles is laid out on top of him looking thoroughly blissed out; his lips are dark and slightly swollen from kissing, his hair is - if possible - more crazed then before from where Derek had apparently been running his hands through it, and he's grinning like it's Christmas and his Birthday all at once. 

Derek kind of knows the feeling.

"I'm hoping that was because you like me - like, it wasn't just some weird gratitude thing for the spot welder?" he says, a little short of breath but still smiling giddily. Derek feels an answering smile spreading across his own face.

"I'm really not that passionate about spot welders," he says, raising a hand to run his thumb over Stiles' swollen bottom lip - because he's allowed to touch now, and he doesn't think he's ever going to be able to stop, especially not when Stiles closes his eyes with a shuddering intake of breath.

"Which reminds me..." Stiles says, eyes still closed. "You need a new microwave."

"Wait, what?"

* * *

Stiles ends up buying him a new microwave, and they have sex all over the Valencia Ivory tiles. Isaac can't decide if he's more pleased about the relationship development or the new spot welder. Lydia is decidedly unimpressed at the christening of her tiles.

Derek has never been happier in his life.

 

**Author's Note:**

> On the day of writing, I squatted down in a supermarket to get a loaf of bread and something in my knee went twang. I am very uncomfortable. Also I've decided to have my mid-life crisis now, so jot that down.
> 
> (This bears no relevance to the fic at all, but I wanted you to know how my day went. How was your day? Did you drink enough water? Oh really? Wow, that must have been nice/awful/enlightening. I love you. I'll never stop. Know that. Never forget me.)
> 
> I literally only wrote this for one sodding line, so if nobody gets the reference I may just lie on the floor for a while, groaning in mental anguish. If you need me, you know where to find me. Bring soup. It doesn't matter what flavour.
> 
> EDIT (and disclaimer): I wrote, speed-edited, and posted this last night without any kind of outside interference, so it's probably riddled with errors. It was in my head and it wanted to come out, so for once I didn't make any weak arguments about "sleep" or "circadian rhythms" - I just sat down and did it. My partner was not pleased when I clattered into the bedroom two hours after she'd gone to sleep, ricocheting off the doorframe and landing face down in the mattress. Not please at all.


End file.
